


The Witching Hour Turns

by Greyneurosis (Spylace)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe, Angels, Blood Drinking, Curses, Demons, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marriage Contracts, Supernatural Elements, Torture, Vampires, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 19:15:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1790167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spylace/pseuds/Greyneurosis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two hunters and a fairy-vampire. </p><p>It can't possibly end well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Witching Hour Turns

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh, I don't even remember what prompt this was based off of. I think my brain is melting through my skull. It's been a hard, hard journey between my fail internet and tagging. I hope you guys appreciate it :)

All hunters, if you went back far enough, were born in the blood.

The drive, the anger, paranoia isn’t normal. It would have cut them real quick from the gene pool if it wasn’t for one fundamental fact—hunters saved people.

He and Yancy, they were never good at school, at books or even music. They were good at football in a way all guys were when they were six-foot tall, full of testosterone and bullshit. The one thing they had was each other; where one went, the other followed.

When they found a bull moose all chewed up, Yancy immediately thought wolves. Raleigh bet bears even though it was too late in the season.

It wasn’t something they could let stand. Having a predator shit in their front yard. There was something thrilling about the chase, tracking massive paw prints and joking that they’d be famous if they bagged the big foot. But hair rose on end when a great, horned head broke through the evergreens, its fog-blind eyes swiveling in the pus-filled sockets. It was sheer luck that Raleigh had a flare in his back pocket. He was stupid enough to throw it to, giving their boogeyman a classic Viking funeral.

The hunter who’d puttered up the road days later told them it was a wendigo. A monster.

They had been lucky; they were naturals.

The Becket brothers were in business.

He and Yancy drove from the perilous north to the sunny climes of Miami, Florida. They ate greasy pizzas at truck stops and stalked black dogs through the swamplands. Breaking and entering became second nature as did lying to the police. They even spent a night at the Ritz-Carlton under the name of some hotshot lawyer.

They’d been arrested several times, posted bail and landed in the slammer again and again for trespassing among other grievances. Their parents were probably spinning in their graves knowing that their sons turned out to be felons.

But they couldn’t stop. They couldn’t get enough of it.

Even when Yancy, the reasonable one, the forever responsible one, cautioned him to slow down, Raleigh greeted every day with a bounce in his step, feeling like he could wrestle a hurricane and win.

This was their life. Hunting was in their blood. If they were smart, they would have stopped a long time ago. They would have buried the wendigo’s bones and never looked back, returning to their boring old lives of tracking rich people and grizzly bear.

They got cocky. The chupacabra, okami, sirens, arachnes and their poisoned teeth, the vetala and their scaled skin, they were animals when it came down to it. Animals with animalistic needs and instincts. Some of them were cunning in a way starving bears were cunning, or old alligators with scars running up and down their spines. They ate, slept, shat and caused pain, pain and pain.

But he and Yancy forgot.

Some of the biggest monsters in the world were human.

 

He didn’t know how long they were down in the pit, snacked on by vamps who ranged from little boys to matronly women.

They weren’t even looking for vampires. Noise complaint, the locals got spooked by the sound of someone skinning a cat and asked them to check it out.

Vampires used to be human. They were human with a couple of extra things.

They weren’t skin walkers who went crazy after the phases of the moon, they weren’t as mindless as werewolves and weren’t even remotely close to the wendigo who roamed the northern wilds. Vampires were human with human lusts and human greed.

They were careless.

Yancy held his hand. Told him— _it’s okay baby brother, somebody’s going to find us_. Somebody had to right?

The vampires dubbed him sunshine for the color of his hair and his stunning personality. He spat in an boy’s eye, hoping that it would melt the fucker’s face straight off his skull. The pimply teen squalled and his sire drew him away, laughing as his yellow fangs punched through the pale gums.

The vampire wedged a thumb between his jaws and pried them open. Cold sludge splashed the back of his throat, daring him to spit it out or drown. Unwillingly, he drank.

Time slowed to a crawl.

Yancy squeezed his hand. In the pit, the damp and the tepid air, his brother was the only real thing he had against the encroaching darkness.

“We’re gonna get out of here.”

“No we’re not.”

He didn’t know how long they stayed under the vampire’s thrall. It could have been hours, it could have been days, it could have been months. Yancy’s voice faded until it was just a whisper ghosting across the side of his face.

He was surprised that his brother still had the strength to resist. With each sip of the black ichor, it became harder and harder to fight.

“Oh” said one, “I think we broke him.”

“ _Hunters_ ” A female hissed. She bit the tip of his nose. “Not so tough now are you?”

His eyes jerked open when Yancy was wrenched from his side. Raleigh felt cold. The empty space was too big. He lunged forward, hand cupping his brother’s heel as the vampires cackled in glee.

“Mmhmm” a vampire purred, tracking his tongue across Yancy’s split temple. He held him up by his hair, nibbling at his earlobe and fawning “What’s that baby? You want to talk?”

Raleigh whimpered, shaking his head.

“No, no, no, please don’t—“

“It’s okay Ray.” Yancy coughed, eyes bulging as he went from his knees to his feet. “It’s okay. Remember that time we—“

The snap of his neck sounded like thunder inside the pit.

Raleigh might have screamed.

He fought, kicked his captor in the teeth when it grabbed hold of him and broke his left arm, fang grazing the underside of his chin, breath clammy as he bucked and twisted, pinned like a butterfly inside a collector’s frame, no hope of escape.

This was how he was going to die. Alone, in a place forgotten by time. Where no one would find him until it was too late. No one would avenge them. There was no one else but them.

_No one?_

Something pulsed at his fingertips, exploring them like a pro’s mouth. It was alive beneath his hand. Something kicked when he reached out, folding his knuckles towards his palms. He felt warm, hot even though there were corpses piled on top of him and not real bodies. As though something else was in the room. Something big. Something powerful.

Its gaze seared past the fake leather and oily skin, the tangle of bone-white limbs and settled on the broken form of his big brother and such sorrow lanced his lungs he could barely draw another breath. Whatever barrier between them, his hand, the thing and the slick membrane of an almost-womb keeping them apart, dissolved like foam.

Light burst in his eyes, blinding him.

He was really warm.

The female choked and reared back in surprise, her mouth dripping pretty, pretty red as blood oozed down her navel. She groped her breasts, long fingers squeezing the pink nipples apart as she probed the hole in between, her blackened heart clearly visible against the yellow gas light.

An arm snaked around her waist. Ivory fangs sank past her ear and sucked eagerly like starving man, choking on the half-congealed lumps of blood as it erupted thick and black across his tongue. The stranger sawed her open with his fangs, dragging the point over the severe column of her neck and down one shoulder until he mouthed at the space between her breasts, obscene for the naked fear on her face, as violent and terrible as rape.

The vampire’s broodmates watched arrested as their sister was devoured from inside out. The newcomer was beautiful, golden even as his face slicked with blood. Raleigh didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed him before. He smiled up helplessly when the stranger discarded the female vampire, stepping forward with a wet squelch.

Yancy’s killer shrieked in defiance and leapt at him. The vampire was immediately thrown backwards, bent around the wall in the shape of a ‘u’. It was a sweet prelude to the screams that followed as Raleigh crawled to Yancy’s side and curled under his arm, drinking in the fetid smell of terror and filth.

“Yancy?” He sobbed. “Please. Wake up.”

Yancy did not move.

Across from him, the stranger knelt down, gore dripping from his fangs. Raleigh froze when he reached out but instead of touching him, the blood-tipped fingernails traced the cut on his brother’s forehead. The vampire frowned in confusion when Yancy failed to wake. Yancy would never wake up again.

“Don’t” Raleigh hissed, trying to pull Yancy away. “Don’t you dare—don’t you dare look at him.”

His hand snagged a black stiletto and he held it threateningly over his head.

The stranger laughed. “You honestly think that can hurt me?”

“It doesn’t hurt to try.”

“Fuck off mate.” The stranger snarled, his teeth popping. “Unless you want to keep him dead. I can save him.”

A wail broke out from behind them. The nest master had returned, walking into a scene of carnage.

Raleigh threw up in his mouth when he saw. Vampires might have been monsters but they were human once. They were human shaped with human parts and it looked like the stranger had redecorated by nailing different pieces on the wall. Blood dripped from the ceiling and Raleigh determinedly refused to look.

“Oh shit” he croaked.

“You!” The vampire accused. “You did this?!”

The stranger held up his hand.

He kept the other vampire aloft with a turn of his wrists, sticky eyelashes painting freckles on his cheeks. “You” the stranger said blankly, wearing blood like exotic body paint. A crook of a finger and the vampire turned in midair. Something in the stranger’s face changed. “You have what I need.”

“Why?!” The vampire demanded. “They’re just sheep! You’re one of us!”

“No” The stranger said, a god of fire, death and ruin. “I’m better.”

A miniature galaxy kindled in the palm of his hands, spinning faster and faster until it fused into a bright comet, blinding to the naked eyes. His captor screeched in agony, skin cracking like the molten edge of a magma flow, blackened from heat. The stranger pushed his hand closer and closer until the whorls of his fingers dipped against the vampire’s waxy chest.

The sudden absence of sound was damning. Raleigh clenched his teeth when the stranger came back, his hand white with powder, feet leaving wet tracks all over the floor. But he only had eyes for Yancy and he called, oblivious to the fact that his brother could not answer.

Light gathered under his skin, bright orange and lavender, the color of dawn when the sun was just beginning to spill across the horizon.

“My name is Charles.” He whispered to him, pillowing Yancy’s dislocated head in his lap. “And I am forever in your delightful service.”

 

And slowly, Yancy began to breathe.

 

Chuck carried Yancy in his arms as he would a bride, climbing the uneven steps one by one, never faltering, never once getting lost in the dark warren with its sharp turns and hidden doors. It was as though the vampire had been there before though Raleigh knew for a fact that he did not. Or maybe he did and Raleigh was dreaming from one moment to the next, the days blurred and squashed together until they leapt into weeks or even months. Maybe it had been a year since they were taken, a year in the pit, livestock to be bled around the clock.

When they finally saw starlight, the moon beaming down at them with a sharp, crescent smile, Raleigh fell to his knees, sifting the dirt with shaky fingers. Unimpressed, Chuck set Yancy down next to him, breathing, whole, alive, almost reverently before turning towards him. He scowled at his wet face and Raleigh snapped “what, what do you want?”

“Your arm dipshit.” Chuck answered after a moment. “It’s broken.”

A finger poked his lips and he bit down instinctively, remembering the cherished moments he was drugged into compliance, nice and biddable as his captors bit and bit and bit. Blood burst in his mouth, thick and sweeter than jam. To his surprise, Chuck did not take his hand back and instead sealed their mouths together, not a drop wasted as the first knuckle hooked around the back of his teeth, spreading more salty-sweet blood on his tongue.

“What the fuck?!” Raleigh exclaimed, pushing the vampire away.

Smug, Chuck wiped his mouth.

“I fixed you.” He said proudly and Raleigh looked down at his arm.

It looked normal, it didn’t hurt anymore but that didn’t mean anything.

“That doesn’t give you the permission—!”

Chuck seemed puzzled.

“But you’re better now.” He entreated and that was true. But it was his decision to make!

Fucking vampires.

“Come on” Chuck said at last, shifting Yancy to support his neck. “We’re not safe here.”

 

Yancy slept through the walk. He slept through a car alarm and the car chase. His sleep continued in the back, head pillowed by rolls and rolls of beach towels. He was sleeping when dawn broke over the horizon behind them, dazzling in the rearview mirror.

There was a change of clothes in the back, loose shirts all in excruciating colors and patterns. Shorts that wrapped too snug around his balls. And while he was too busy admiring the fact that Chuck’s ass hadn’t changed bare or covered, the vampire took advantage of his momentary distraction by biting his thumb open and squeezing the drops into Yancy’s open mouth. He thought it might have been the angle, it might have been his shirt or even the sunlight but his blood glittered like a stripper on stage. There was no way that was normal.

“Jesus Christ _Ray_ ” Vampire Chuck growled when Raleigh shoved him out of the way. “What do you want now?”

Some of the blood landed on the upholstery and fizzled before fading away.

“Your blood.” Raleigh gaped. “It’s _pink_.”

“So?” Chuck said defensively.

“You... you’re...” Raleigh fumbled for words. “You’re turning him!”

“What? No!” The vampire said in alarm. “I wouldn’t do that. Not to him. I need him.”

Before he could examine the words further, Yancy rolled over with a sigh.

He did seem a little better. Color returned to his cheeks, subtracted from the bruises around his throat. Chuck looked smug as he finished his examination and Raleigh calmly resisted the urge to punch him in the face. The vampire had, after all, saved their asses. Certain allowance had to be made. Even if it meant letting him live.

In daylight, Chuck didn’t look like a vampire. He looked more like a college kid roughing it out through the lower forty-eight. But Raleigh couldn’t forget the monsters that prowled the nights and just because Chuck was a creature of sunlight, blinked and drew breath all at the right time, didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean he wasn’t a monster.

Maybe he was a werewolf, a succubus, or a kitsune, a djinn or a skinwalker.

He could have been a demon, shtriga, a vetala or even a banshee.

As they drove up highway 350, Chuck began to give him increasingly uncomfortable looks until he finally broke out “I’m a fairy alright?”

Sitting in the back, he said intelligently “huh?”

“I’m a fairy.” Chuck snapped. “A fucking fairy vampire so you can stop wondering.”

“Are you coming out to me?” Raleigh wondered out loud.

Chuck flipped him the bird.

“Bite me.” And Raleigh almost did, teeth dangerously close to grazing the vampire’s reddened ears before turning away at the last minute.

“What do you mean a fairy vampire?!”

“I was a fairy. I got bit.”

“That’s just... you’re Australian.”

“I got that Einstein, thanks.”

“Your blood is pink!” Raleigh accused.

“Only under direct sunlight.” Chuck muttered sullenly as though that somehow made it better.

“But...”

A punch to the back of his head caught him off guard. His forehead bounced off the back of Chuck’s seat causing the vampire to curse and swerve violently.

“Oi! Are you completely cracked?!”

Yancy punched him in the head again.

“Five more minutes.” His brother mumbled in a sleepy voice.

“Yancy?”

Chuck immediately pulled over.

“Yance” Raleigh coaxed, “C’mon, wake up. It’s almost noon.”

“I’ve fallen for that before.” Yancy said stubbornly, curling into Dora the Explorer.

Raleigh let out a hysteric giggle, stifled only when Chuck slid the door open and Yancy cringed at the sunlight slashing his skin.

He managed to pop open one eye and squint. “Where the hell are we anyway?”

“I don’t know.” Raleigh said in a hushed whisper. “Yancy, listen, how do you feel?”

“Mmmph on a scale from one to ten—Bruce’s funeral. Who’s the kid?”

Chuck looked overwhelmed by this belated observation. Excited too, like all the Christmases in the world had come all at once, right at his doorstep, shedding gifts and stockings and vomiting December cheer all over his front yard.

“Hello” He introduced himself, uncharacteristically shy. “I’m Charles.”

“This is Chuck.” Raleigh corrected automatically since that’s what he’d been calling him inside his head.

Chuck glared.

“Ray” Yancy warned.

“What? I didn’t do anything.”

Chuck toed the dirt.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”

“Right,” Raleigh rolled his eyes. “Because that’s not creepy at all.”

Yancy looked like he had a headache.

“Raleigh, you... you understand him?”

Raleigh shrugged. “Not really. I mean the amount of shit that comes out of this kid’s throat—Shit!” Chuck stomped on his foot. “He did save our bacon.” He added in the interest of fairness. “But he’s a vampire and I’m ninety-nine percent sure he wants to bone you.”

Yancy nodded slowly.

“So he _does_ speak English.” He said, discarding information vital to their prolonged survival.

“Yeah?”

“Raleigh? He doesn’t speak English.”

Raleigh was thrown momentarily.

“What?”

Chuck made a noise, an echo of an echo of an echo deep inside his throat. He shook his head and Yancy looked at him in sympathy. “Hey, it’s okay—“

“Fuck!” Raleigh spat when fingers closed around his throat, dragging him out of the van. Yancy yelled when the car shook from the force of being slammed against the door.

“Stop!”

“Motherfucker!” Chuck swore. “What did you do? What did you _do_?!”

The vampire’s eyes were crazed, splintered with a manic light the same shade of his blood. It made his grey eyes glow red. Like the signal light before a train screamed past. Raleigh clawed at his throat. He’d seen the look before. On an arachne whose nest had been torched. No hope. No forgiveness.

He saw his vision go black.

“This wasn’t part of the deal! I spent seventy years in that hellhole waiting for him. What the fuck did you do?!”

“Hey, hey! STOP!” 

Yancy fell in the dirt.

Chuck immediately let him go.

Yancy sat up with a groan before turning away from the helping hands. Chuck looked like he’d been slapped. His neck flushed red from embarrassment though his face remained pale as he stammered out an apology. It didn’t matter. Yancy couldn’t understand him. For all he knew, the vampire could be singing Kumbaya to the end of the world. Chuck clammed up rather quickly at this realization.

“I don’t know what’s going on. Frankly, I don’t care. We got out. We’re alive. We can fix this. Whatever it is. But if you think I’m going to let you take it out on my little brother, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Raleigh helped him up. His knees were bleeding. He saw Chuck flex his thumbs and remembered the broken arm.

He squeezed Yancy’s hand tight.

Yancy squeezed back.

“For what it’s worth.” His brother said, his expression tired. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.” Chuck replied thickly, his voice small. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

 

Their destination turned out to be a patch of dirt in the middle of nowhere, smooth white rocks laid out in a symmetric circle under the glaring sun.

Raleigh blew his breath.

“Okay. What am I missing?”

“Give me your hand.” Chuck muttered. He turned to Yancy, still unable to meet his eyes. He held out a hand and said “You too.”

“He wants your hand Yance.” Raleigh chirped helpfully. His brother looked exhausted. Even after the marathon sleep. There were bags under his eyes big enough to haul potatoes.

“I get that but why?”

Chuck still had his eyes fixed on his feet when he answered Yancy.

“I’m going to take you somewhere safe. Somewhere the bad guys can’t come after us.”

“Woah, woah, woah, what bad guys?” And Chuck gave him such a wretched look that Raleigh took it all back.

“Raleigh.” Yancy said in disproval. He placed his hand in Chuck’s fingers.

“Fine.”

He didn’t think it was possible but Chuck’s face became redder.

“Don’t freak out.”

 

“Woah”

They found themselves in a wooden glen, something out of every pretentious painting they saw inside an art book or a pamphlet. There were flowers everywhere. Poles with streamers on top, a gigantic tent with the gardens of Versailles transplanted around it.

“You are a fairy.”

“Shut your hole.”

“So what, this is supposed to protect us how?”

Chuck looked irritated.

“This is the fairy realm, or at least a part of it. The part I inherited anyway.”

“Who’d you have to kill for that?” Raleigh joked.

Chuck was silent.

“Holy—“

Yancy dragged him away.

“Ow! Yance!”

For a person recently brought back from death and coma, Yancy had a grip like a Jewish mom at a yard sale.

“First, stop antagonizing him. Second, what is going on? Where are we?”

“We’re on like, Middle Earth.”

“Ask him why.”

“I’m right here.” Chuck mumbled.

“He can hear you.” Raleigh translated.

Yancy rolled his eyes.

“Well I can’t understand him so it doesn’t matter. Who is he?” 

“I’m Charles of the Summer Court.”

Raleigh repeated it dutifully.

Yancy squinted at Chuck and said “I thought he was a vampire.” 

“He’s a vampire. He just doesn’t... sparkle.” Chuck looked ready to throttle him again. “So we’ve got a dud, it happens.”

“Ray” Yancy warned. “Be nice.”

They looked around. Not exactly sunshine and rainbows but it was close enough. In fact, the sun was starting to set on their extra-dimensional adventure. There was a bite to the air that hadn’t been there before. Amplified by the fact how agitated Chuck seemed, squirming like he needed to piss.

“So what was he so afraid of that he took us to another _dimension_?”

It was a good question.

“Reapers” Chuck answered. “There are consequences when you bring someone back to life. What is dead should stay dead. You can’t do it without destroying the natural order. And yeah, they’ll be out for your brother’s blood but it won’t be pretty either for people involved.”

Raleigh swallowed. “So what do we do now?”

“Stay” When Yancy frowned at the repetition, Chuck hastened to add “At least until they go away. You’ll be safe here.”

And as Chuck walked away, Yancy asked the wind “but for how long?”

 

Despite his misgivings, Yancy tried to make nice with Chuck, grateful despite the fact that he was a vampire and tried to kill Raleigh once already.

“I’d be surprised if he hadn’t.” Yancy admitted with a shrug. “You should talk to him you know. He kinda seems lonely and I can’t understand a thing he says.”

“He’s a vampire.” Raleigh reminded him, singing the tired, old tune.

“He did save our lives.”

Raleigh scowled. “Low blow Yance.”

So he tried being nice.

“Hey” He greeted, to Chuck who had once again been out all night. Raleigh didn’t question it too closely. As he’d repeated many, many times, Chuck was a vampire. Vampires drank blood. Being the only walking, living, breathing things for miles around, he wasn’t keen on volunteering his blood. Or Yancy’s. But he felt his insides twist when he caught smell of the perfume on Chuck’s skin. Sex, smoke and booze that seemed to reek from his pores. “You um look, tired. Anything I can do to help?”

“You?” Chuck scoffed, shoving a bag of groceries in his arms. “No. Never.”

He stalked off in the other direction.

At least they had food.

“Jesus, why don’t you tell me how you really feel?”

 

Chuck remained unfailingly polite to Yancy. But there were only so many things they could point at and grunt before running out of things to say. There were hand gestures, mimes, stuff that made Raleigh bite his knuckles and giggle as Yancy puzzled through Chuck’s interpretive dance. Yancy called him a dick for not helping and Raleigh replied that Chuck didn’t want his help anyway.

And Chuck didn’t want his help. Chuck specifically went out of his way to be an asshole and avoid him. It stung a little at first. But maybe it was for the best. Chuck was a vampire—a fairy vampire. He figured he and Yancy would have a good laugh about it later.

“I wish I could talk to you.” Yancy grumbled, wedging himself into a seat against Chuck. At the familiar, lazy look, he amended “You know what I mean. Too bad you can’t write. I mean, can you?”

What Raleigh saw as plain A to Z appeared as bunch of gibberish to Yancy’s eyes.

“Maybe it’s me.” He said in bewilderment. “I mean, I sucked at school.”

“You failed Pre-calc.” Raleigh agreed serenely. “But why is that really? How come I can understand you and he can’t?”

They probably should have asked the question earlier. The look on Chuck’s face is priceless.

Chuck mumbles something. It makes him suspicious.

“You have to say that louder.”

“You’re my wife alright?!”

And with that outburst, Chuck disappears. Not even a shimmer, not a single wrinkle in the fabric of the universe. He just straight up disappears like some Freudian nightmare.

“Holy shit. I'm a wha... his wife?!” Raleigh said. “Holy, shut the fuck up Yance. It’s not that funny—!”

 

It made sense why Chuck would avoid him. That didn’t really help with the hows and whys and whens of Raleigh agreeing to the supernatural brand of holy matrimony, as far as he knew, their parents weren’t hunters. He and Yancy avoided witches and other magical creatures. He hadn’t touched anything cursed, or rumored to be cursed in the past six months.

Cornering someone who can shift in and out of reality was hard. When that person was also his prison guard, it was downright impossible. So Raleigh did what all hunters did in a time of crisis. He became innovative, cut corners, made promises he knew he couldn’t keep.

He got Yancy to sit on the vampire while he interrogated him. It wasn’t like Yancy would understand anyway. His brother gave him a put upon look over the foot-long they were sharing.

And Chuck, like the tallest of trees, fell for it.

“Is it an instinct thing?” He asked. “Like how ducklings imprint on the first thing they see? Are you like a fairy-vampire-duckling?”

“Raleigh” Yancy groaned.

Subterfuge is beyond him. Raleigh watches in glee, substantially less glee as they progress, as it all comes out.

“Your grandmother was a bitch.”

“Hey” Yancy flicked Chuck on the nose. “Language.”

Chuck jerked his head, failing to get away.

“It’s a curse.”

“Hah, I knew it.” 

“Knew what?” Yancy demanded. 

Raleigh pushed the kid until he explained.

“About a hundred years ago, I tried to run away and a vampire caught me. I killed the fucker and came back but I didn’t know... I didn’t realize.” Chuck swallowed. “The thing about fairies. They’re like fucking catnip to vampires. The fairy part kept me sane during the day but at night...”

Yancy got off of him.

“Raleigh,” He said uncertainly. “He’s crying.”

“All I know is that when the sun came up, they were all dead. There was dust and blood everywhere. The entire court was in an uproar but they couldn’t kill me. They didn’t know _how_.”

Chuck gripped the earth, letting the bits of grass and greenery push between his knuckles.

“Raleigh” Yancy whispered. “What the hell is he saying?”

But Raleigh stood hypnotized by the defeated tone and the slump of his shoulders, the minute quakes that shook his spine the longer and longer Yancy stayed away.

“He” He started but stopped.

“They wanted to get rid of me so they fobbed me off on the first hunter they came across. Sold me as this great gift and told me that if I was good, I could…”

Raleigh knelt down.

“You could what?”

Chuck shook his head, pressing his lips closed.

“The curse is passed down to the firstborns in your family, father to son, mother to daughter, it doesn’t matter.” He stood up, patting the dirt from his knees. “It has to be the firstborn. Think of me as your guardian angel. Kind of. I don’t know. No one’s ever summoned me before.” He muttered “this long anyway.”

“But I’m not...” Raleigh said hesitantly.

“I know you’re not. That’s why this is wrong.” Chuck said shamefaced “’s why you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.” He said automatically.

Yancy raised an eyebrow. Chuck raised an eyebrow.

He offered “I still think you’re a dick.”

Chuck snorted.

“Yancy died.” He said in a calm voice, eyes rimmed red like he wanted a good bawl. “I think that’s why...” Yancy stood still as he reached out with his fingers. But Chuck drew back at the last minute as though realizing the futility of his actions, Narcissus as he kissed his reflection in the water.

“I heard my name in there somewhere.” Yancy said lightly. “Does anyone want to explain to me what’s going on?”

Chuck deflated.

“Tell him what you want.” He told Raleigh. “Tell him, I’ll let you both go when it’s safe. I won’t bother you again.”

 

Chuck returned at dawn, coughing hard as he stumbled into the tent.

Yancy, being Yancy, barely stirred. But Raleigh jumped out of bed the moment the tarp peeled back to admit the fairy-vampire inside.

“Jesus fuck” Raleigh swore when he saw the blackened skin on Chuck’s back, electricity arcing between his limbs like he got in a fight with a fucking power plant. He was hesitant to touch him but he couldn’t exactly leave the kid on the floor. Grabbing a blanket, what felt like a blanket, it was dark enough yet in the tent that everything was muffled, and wrapped it around his hands.

Chuck cried out pitifully when he was rolled over. And his front, his front was worse because it was caved in, as a hollow as a pumpkin in the dying days of October. He had no idea how Chuck was still alive.

“Shit” Yancy breathed, suddenly at his side. “What happened?”

Chuck still had a mind enough to answer.

“Ambush” he gasped, “F-fucking reapers.”

“A reaper did this to you?” Raleigh said in disbelief.

Chuck let out a low moan to indicate he didn’t care if Raleigh believed.

“It’s good.” He said, blinking up at Yancy. Only at Yancy. “T-they didn’t, f-follow. It means no one is after you.”

Yancy, not comprehending, stroked Chuck’s cheeks, the only part of him still intact.

“What do we do Raleigh? Do we move him?”

“Why are you asking me?!”

“You’re the one who can talk to him!”

“B-b-blood.” Chuck stuttered. “I need blood.”

Raleigh turned to look at him. Contrite, he said, “I’m sorry.”

“He says he needs blood.”

“Blood?”

“Blood”

Yancy let out a deep breath. “Okay, hold on.”

The vampire made an inquisitive whimper when his mouth was opened, a finger tickling his canines until they popped out, already stained red. “Hey, stay awake okay?” Chuck shook disagreeably as Yancy cut his finger in his mouth and let it bleed. Raleigh saw the muscles in his throat move as he tried to suck.

“No” He groaned. “Don’t.”

“Sorry kid” Yancy apologized. “But we don’t carry O-negatives.”

Chuck shot him an ungrateful look. Opening his mouth wide, he bit down.

 

Yancy was asleep again, Chuck curled up right next to him. He wasn’t sure how the law of exchanges worked but he saw the vampire feeding Yancy his blood while he wasn’t looking. Since the current ratio was one drop per liters he took out, he figured it couldn’t do any harm. He stood guard outside the tent with a pointy stick and a lamp. At the very least, he would go down making plenty of noise as a warning.

When the sun melted down against the green hills and the treetops, Chuck was still there, sated and cat-like, all but purring as he bumped his head against Yancy’s shoulder.

“Okay, that’s sick—that’s my _brother_.”

Chuck paid him no heed because it was Chuck. But when he woke Yancy up for his infusion of electrolytes and solid food, he didn’t seem to mind that there was a centenarian vampire stuck to his hips.

“He nearly died Raleigh.”

“He’s a vampire, I’m pretty sure he’s past nearly.”

“He’s still here.” Chuck grumbled, so in love with his brother’s shirt there were hearts in his eyes and Yancy had to basically slip out of it to take a shower.

“So reapers?”

“Dead” Chuck replied, twisting the cheap polyester between his fingers. His brow creased. “I think.”

“Can you even kill death?”

“Everything dies.” Chuck dismissed and it sent a forbidding sense of providence rocketing down his stomach. “And reapers aren’t death, they’re chum food.”

When he heard this explanation, Yancy seemed disappointed.

“So I’m not important enough for Death?”

“Count your blessings. ‘S what my old man always says.” Chuck quipped and fell asleep right in Yancy’s bed.

 

His brother and Chuck formed an alliance based on their respective, death-defying experiences. Raleigh was kind of jealous.

He heard a low noise of frustration which meant that Chuck was trying to talk to Yancy again. For a fairy-vampire who considered humans livestock and playthings, he was amazingly tactile. The different shifts in his movements, the color that sparked in his eyes spoke more words than when he opened his big fat mouth.

After spending a week in fairyland, Raleigh realized that the place was bigger than he thought. There was more to Chuck’s manor than flowers, flowers and more flowers. There were animals here, easily recognizable. From the antlered deer to the cottontails chewing on clover. He’d always been a meat-and-potatoes guy. But eating processed foods, complete with wrapping, wore on a guy after a while. When Yancy begged for fresh produce, all manners of vegetables resulted in the garden drawing even more animals near the tent.

Raleigh elbowed his brother in the ribs as a fat rabbit sniffed through the carrots.

“Think we could catch that?”

“Don’t you dare.” Chuck warned with a far off look on his face.

A hawk swooped low, songbirds called out from the bushes. Squirrels launched themselves from the tree branches and a mouse made a home in the grass. But these animals, small and big, all had the same thing in common. They were madly in love with Chuck.

Raleigh nearly busted a gut laughing when he saw Chuck followed by his entourage of yellow ducklings.

“Your face—you’re Snow White. No wait, Princess Aurora!”

“What the fuck are you on about Becket?”

But while he was distracted, Yancy snuck up on him and tucked a white flower in his ear.

“There you go, Princess Chuck.”

Chuck blushed hotly under the collar. He couldn’t even get away because there were ducks underfoot, quacking for attention. It was almost worth it to see Yancy cup the back of his skull and ruffle his hair.

 

“I like it here.” Yancy remarked one evening not too long after. “I mean, I don’t mind really.”

“Well maybe we can ask Chuck to let us in every once in a while.”

“I’m not sure I want to leave.”

“What?” Raleigh put his plate down, salads, greens, stuff he wouldn’t deign to touch unless he was on the verge of starving and it was a choice between eating rabbit food and dirt. Even then he might choose dirt.

“I’m out.” Yancy said quietly. “This was never the life for us kiddo. Mom and dad, they weren’t hunters. Granddad and Nana weren’t either or we’d know this stuff.”

“Yancy, we can’t stop.” Raleigh argued. “You’ve seen what happens—you were _dead_.”

“I know, and that makes a guy think. We’re okay now but five years, ten years, can you see us ten years from now running after a werewolf?”

“Helping people, hunting things. That’s the family business.”

“It was the family business Raleigh.” Yancy corrected. “I’m out.”

“You...” Raleigh laughed. “You’re serious.”

“I am.” Yancy said calmly. “Maybe this is something for you to think about as well.”

 

They’d been together their entire lives. It seemed impossible that they’d disagree on something but there it was. They disagreed.

It did not make any sense.

Chuck dropped a bag at his feet. The seams burst and coins tumbled out, bathing his skin gold.

“Dude, did you mug a leprechaun for these?”

The vampire immediately looked offended.

Yancy added his two cents.

“We’re not going to get an angry... pirate on our doorstep demanding his booty back are we?”

Chuck made a swift slashing motion with his hand. He didn’t seem interested in talking but he rarely was these days. There wasn’t much point if he wanted to talk to Yancy and didn’t want Raleigh to overhear everything and offer his assistance.

“You found these?” Raleigh guessed hopefully though if gold was that easy to find, they wouldn’t be so valuable.

Chuck shook his head. He made a flying motion.

Before he could guess, Yancy sputtered “Dragons, dragons are real?”

The vampire nodded.

“Holy shit” his brother exclaimed, brushing his knuckles against the goblets and the crown. “That... that is awesome.”

Chuck shrugged modestly and helped him sort the pile.

“Hey kid” Yancy said, bumping their shoulders together. “You’re alright.”

 

The day they went back to the human world was anticlimactic. They were back to where they started, middle of nowhere, rocks surrounding them like white monoliths.

The SUV was gone. In its place was a pickup, the keys still in the ignition.

“This for us?” Yancy asked.

Mutely, Chuck nodded.

Raleigh looked in the back. Food, clothes, money, gold, knives, he wondered what Chuck did to get his hands on this stuff and chastised himself for expecting the worst. It was probably the worst. As they got in the pickup, Yancy looked out the window. Chuck was still there, waiting for them to leave. Their fairy-vampire guardian angel.

“Chuck” Yancy said at last, the first time they’d heard him use the kid’s name.

Chuck startled and nearly fell on his ass. He glared at Raleigh, just past Yancy’s shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“Got anywhere to go?”

Chuck clearly did not understand the question. Raleigh didn’t understand the question. Did he not remember where they were the past few weeks? Maybe this was belated trauma from whatever black magic Chuck used to save his life.

Yancy nodded and stretched out a hand.

“Why don’t you come with us?”

 

It was a road trip from Idaho to home sweet Alaska. Now that Yancy had effectively quit, even Raleigh couldn’t muster up enough shit to go on a hunt. They did pass messages, tips, leads to the hunting community who’d given them up for dead. Tendo chewed them out for fifteen minutes on the phone.

Chuck, like with Yancy, couldn’t communicate with anyone else. Most people thought he was Swedish, or German, or something exotically European. It got him a lot of admirers before they realized something Raleigh’d known all along. Chuck only had eyes for Yancy.

He stuck close to his older brother whenever they had to get out of the car, to use the bathroom or the gold they had in their stash. Chuck looked adorably lost whenever they had to deal with civilization, panicking whenever Yancy ducked out of sight. Unused to so many people, colors and smells concentrated in one place. It got to be that Yancy casually slung an arm around his waist when they went shopping, earning dirty looks, slurs, epithets easily beaten down by the weight of his fists.

Raleigh couldn’t help but be suspicious at every touch, every whisper, every loaded look. They’d made their disinterest clear. Chuck wasn’t going to marry Yancy. He wasn’t going to marry Raleigh either.

 

The familiar gasps and sighs woke him up.

His first thought was, when did Yancy have time to find a girl? Second thought was, how did he manage to squeeze a girl between him and Chuck?

Yancy wasn’t in bed.

He followed the sound of fucking to the bathroom where a small rectangle of light stretched across the cheap carpet. From the door, he could see stretches of skin and red hair, low-slung jeans and star-spangled boxers as Yancy thrust deep. His eyes widened when he realized what he was looking at.

“What the fuck!” He shrieked.

Chuck seemed supremely annoyed at the interruption, not an ounce of shame as he jumped off the counter, a line of jizz running down the inside of his thighs. Christ—he looked away. He hadn’t meant to see that. No man was meant to see or hear the slickness of their big brother dick popping free of someone’s ass.

“This isn’t what it looks like.”

“My eyes” Raleigh whimpered.

Chuck was less than sympathetic.

“Knock next time you drongo.”

He began to hyperventilate.

“I can’t handle this.” He said to the ceiling. And promptly locked himself out inside the car.

Five minutes later, Yancy knocked on the car window. Raleigh relished the silence for one whole minute before rolling the window down, staring balefully like a child who’d been told that Santa didn’t exist. Disillusioned beyond measure, he didn’t talk, even though he should have. He’d always been chatty. He was going to talk.

“You’re fucking him.” He accused in a strangled voice.

Yancy didn’t bother denying it.

“Yeah.”

“ _Why?_ ”

His brother shrugged.

“We’re too consenting adults. We like each other. There’s no one else—take your pick Raleigh, you’ll still be upset about it.”

“Damn right I’m upset!” He yelled. “What are you thinking?!”

“I’m thinking” His brother said, disproportionately serene. “That I have the right to make my own choices.”

“He’s a vampire.”

“Who saved our lives.”

“He still needs to drink blood Yance! And he sure as hell isn’t on a vegetarian diet!”

“Kid” Yancy said patiently. “Are you angry because I’m having sex with him or because he’s having sex with me.”

Wheels spun inside his head.

“That... doesn’t even make sense. Am I mad because he’s fucking you?”

“Are you?”

“Yancy” He said, lowering his voice to a hiss. “We hunt things like him. We kill things like him. To save people.”

His brother looked weary.

“And what gave us the right to go on this bloody crusade? The wendigo? That thing was old. It wasn’t hurting anybody. It could have waited until someone else came up in spring to kill it.”

“But we killed it.”

“There is no we anymore Ray. I’m out remember? I’m done killing things.” He turned away. “I don’t mind if you don’t agree. You can keep hunting if you want, I can’t stop you. But me and Chuck.”

“You can’t even understand what he’s saying.” Raleigh muttered rebelliously.

“But he understands me.” Yancy finished. “Me and Chuck are happening whether you like it or not. Deal with it.”

 

It was the general touching, holding their hands together when they thought Raleigh wasn’t looking. Kisses, always stolen like they were teenagers sneaking off under their father’s watchful eye. Now that Raleigh knew, he noticed it more and more often.

His chest flexed with anger, at Chuck who fucked Yancy and at Yancy who fucked him back. He was furiously beating off in the bathroom, the beat punishing as he imagined what a fairy-vampire could do, how much he could take, the tightness of someone’s ass after seventy years and what it would take to stretch him open.

“Fuck” He heaved, staring down at his limp cock in disgust.

“Shit, sorry mate.”

The indignity of having been caught with his pants down was a passing thought in his mind. When he saw the tousled bedhair and the sleepy creases against his cheeks, like he was a living, breathing, human being, Raleigh snapped.

“Stay away from him.”

Chuck drew back, lifting is canines.

“Fuck off mate, he’s my bride. You’re just a substitute.”

Somehow, that comment hurt more than anything else.

“Need help with that?” Chuck taunted as his masochistic dick twitched with renewed interest.

“No” Raleigh growled, shoving himself back in his pants. He drew up the zipper so quickly he nearly castrated himself. “Stay away from me.”

Chuck slammed the door behind him.

“With pleasure.”

 

The life in the pickup became increasingly uncomfortable.

Raleigh seethed inside but couldn’t retaliate. Chuck could probably rip him inside out if he had a mind to, especially since they’d rejected his brand of protection.

Yancy, like a good big brother, tried to mediate. Kept Chuck and Raleigh separate by sitting in the middle, sometimes leaning his head against Chuck half-asleep. Considering that he equaled half the problem he had with Chuck, it wasn’t helping. At all.

It all came to head after Yancy fell asleep and Raleigh found Chuck outside, idling as he stared up at the stars.

“If you miss it so much, why don’t you just go home?”

Chuck blinks lazily, stretched out across the back with feline grace. He reminds him of a fisher satisfied with a kill, toying with the remains of a pink-fleshed trout before disappearing into the underwood. Frowning, Raleigh stepped closer. Wondering what had the fairy-vampire so captivated when Chuck reached out and punched him in the eye.

“Get up” Chuck said, his boots hitting gravel. Raleigh stared owlishly, unable to believe what was happening. “Get up” Chuck said again. “ _Fight_ ”.

So he did.

The fight was mostly one-sided. No matter how easy Chuck was on Raleigh, he was still a vampire with a hide made of steel while he was a bitty human, fragile and easily breakable. But Chuck didn’t expect the kick to his nose which had his head snap sideways with a horrifying crunch that gave him flashbacks to Yancy’s death. Chuck stopped for a breather, letting Raleigh get a hold of himself.

He smirked at him, teeth bloody.

“Happy?”

With a growl, Raleigh launched himself at the vampire.

 

Yancy shook his head when he saw them the next day.

 

Raleigh searched fairies on the internet and came up with a bazillion results. He wasn’t sure what happened to Chuck, or how to lift the curse on their family. The lore didn’t offer much in the ways of cross-species breeding. He did come across an obscene number of Twilight fanfic and snapped his laptop shut when he saw the fanarts of _werewolves_.

Chuck was a bona fide fairy, raised under the fairy mound. He must have found a way into the human world when he was young—trying to run away. Just what the hell was he trying to run away from? Contrary to Yancy’s opinion, he did appreciate the place Chuck took them to. It was a paradise compared to what they saw sometimes in their line of work. It didn’t matter what Yancy said. It was in their blood. Chuck just confirmed it. And he wanted to know what would make a young fairy run away into the unknown.

Unless it hadn’t been unknown.

 

In Washington, they ended up sneaking into a church where Chuck burned himself badly against a candleholder.

“Cold iron” Chuck shuddered, flexing his blistered hands. “Repels spirits.”

Yancy winced as they poured water on it, splashing some onto the pews. Thunder clapped overhead as the pouring rain drummed against the stained glass.

“I thought you were immune to those kind of things.”

Raleigh commented, poking in the side.

Chuck squirmed away.

“It’s about the belief. This shit is probably hundreds of years old. Think of how many people prayed.”

“Oh wow” Raleigh picked the candleholder off the floor. It was a little banged up but felt solid in his hands. “Think we can see this stuff?”

“Ray” Yancy groaned.

“What? If no one wants this stuff...”

“We’re in a church.”

“An abandoned church.” Raleigh countered.

“It’s Tuesday.”

“Shame on them.” He said primly and looked up. “It’s really coming down out there.”

“I don’t like it.” Chuck said nervously, licking his lips. He tugged on Yancy’s sleeve. “We should leave.”

“Chuck says we should leave.” Raleigh informed him.

Yancy frowned.

“We’re not going anywhere in that weather.”

“I can find a fairy circle.” Chuck offered. “I can take you back.”

When he heard the explanation, Yancy wrapped an arm around Chuck shoulders.

“What’s this all about? What’s wrong?”

“Something’s wrong.” Chuck spat, angry in the face of fear. The pupils in his eyes were blown, pitch black inside the grey rime. “I don’t... I don’t know.”

“This is consecrated grounds.” Raleigh said. “And you are surrounded by a bunch of iron. Maybe it’s too...” He looked around and guessed “Presbyterian?”

“It’s not that.” Chuck argued. “I’ve been inside a church before fucker, I know what it feels like.”

“Alright” Yancy intervened, setting his foot down. “If it bothers you this much, we’ll go out. It’d be nice to see Thumper and his friends anyway.”

Almost instantaneously, Chuck ran to the church doors to open them when he suddenly stops, eyes tracking the shadows at his feet.

“RUN!” He yelled but it was too late. Glass breaks in from the outside as the church was plunged into darkness. Lightning forked the sky and in a series of montages, he saw Chuck push at the door and give up. He left sticky handprints all over the walls as he held up a globe of light, turbulent in its beauty, outer rings sweeping to light the flooded room.

Light flickered on again, several light bulbs blowing all at once. He saw a man at the altar, twisting the wick on an ivory candle as it coughed up fire. The man’s eyes were black.

This was something he’d only heard as hearsay. At his side, Yancy hitches his breath.

The man was a demon.

“Hi”

The single word rose all the hairs on his back even as rain sluiced down his shirt. Beside him, Yancy had a similar reaction and grabbed him by the elbow, squeezing him and edging him towards the back.

“What do you want?” Chuck demanded, threatening to throw the pyroclastic cloud forward and blow his head off if he answered wrong.

The demon looked like a desk jockey, a bureaucrat, a part of the machine. Every inch was tattooed with monsters from a lovecraftian dream. An academic trying to look tough then. He thought with a touch of hysteria. He and Yance had an English teacher like that once. The man had great weed.

“Well see, I was minding my own business, torturing prisoners gets boring after a while, when a little birdy told me that someone had been raised from the dead.” He threw a saucy wink at his brother and Yancy recoiled in disgust, hand creeping slowly to the knife strapped to his back.

“Uh-uh” The demon said, snapping his fingers. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“You’re not a reaper.” Chuck hissed. “This is out of your jurisdiction.”

“And you’re right” The demon shrugged, rolling one shoulder. “I don’t really care about him. He’s a nobody.”

“You really know how to make a guy feel special.” Yancy quipped, his nails digging into his arm. He jerked his eyes furtively towards Chuck. Raleigh understood. Chuck was the target.

“But you” The demon continued, ignoring Yancy. “You’re different. Interesting.”

“Why?”

“Why? Do you even need to ask?”

The wind blew and sprayed water over them. Both Chuck and the demon stayed miraculously dry. “You my friend, are one in a million. No billion, trillions! A fairy-vampire hybrid! I’ve been looking for something like you for a very long time.”

“Lucky me.” And Raleigh wanted to tell him to shut up because the demon’s smarmy face split in delight.

“I’ll make you a deal. These two Neanderthals over there.” An invisible hand wrapped around their throats, cutting off their air supply. Yancy, normally calm and collected, made a noise of distress. His eyes bugging out. The muscles in his jaws twitched when his head tilted ever so slightly to the left.

“Let him go.” Raleigh choked out.

The demon leered.

“All for the very low price of your immortal soul.”

“Fairies don’t have souls.” Chuck scoffed. “Only humans do.”

“But you weren’t born fairy were you?” The demon tutted. “You used to be human.”

 

“Don’t you dare Chuck.” Yancy wheezed. “Don’t you _dare_.”

But Raleigh could see it in his eyes. Chuck already decided, with or without Yancy’s blessings. He saw the fight leave him as the light collapsed, leaving the room in the eerie glow of the fluorescent lights. Raleigh always thought of churches like stern father figures, a distant, steady presence. But this was something straight out of his nightmares. The pit where he was fed and was fed upon in turn.

“A deal” Chuck said grimly.

“A deal” the demon repeated. “Even I can’t go back on that.”

“What deal?!” Yancy demanded. “Chuck, what deal?!”

Annoyed, the demon was about to snap his fingers again when Chuck stopped him with the faint echoes of his fairy powers.

“You precious little thing.” The demon cooed. “How did I ever miss you?”

“You want my soul? Come and get it you dingo fucker.”

The demon crossed his arms. “I’m not going to.” He nodded to Raleigh. “He is.”

One moment, Raleigh was free. He was about to reach for his gun when smoke poured into his guts through his nostrils, mouth and ears.

He saw Yancy who was pale with shock.

“Ray?” and Chuck who gritted his teeth and forced himself not to move.

“Don’t do this mate, Ra _leigh_ ” A month of co-inhabitance and the kid still couldn’t get his name right. “You can fight it.”

He tried, god knew he tried. But he couldn’t stop himself from stepping forward, water splashing cold against his ankles to remind him this was not a dream. This was real. And he was about to kill Chuck.

 _Not kill_ the demon whispered, making his insides crawl. _Not kill, collect_.

It fitted inside him like it was trying on a suit because that was what he was, a suit for demons to wear—a meat suit just like the one discarded at the altar, the one with tattoos of leviathan monsters climbing up and down his arms.

 _I liked that body_. _Maybe I’ll keep it in storage._

 _Maybe_ he thought angrily  _you should get the fuck out of my body._

Chuck bravely raised his chin when he was only a few inches away, sharing each other’s breath, not in the way he wanted, not in the way he ever intended.

_Poor baby. Do you need a time out?_

_You can’t kill him_

_No_ the demon answered smug. _That’s why I have you._

 

The first strike caught him off guard, right across the temple where Yancy’s scar was pale and knotted across the tanned skin. Chuck’s skull caved in as blood spouted, washed away easily in the rain. He fell to his knees, too shocked to even scream as Raleigh raised the cold iron in his hands.

“ _RALEIGH NO!!_ ”

“ _I’m so fucking sorry._ ”

The second blow caught him across the back and Chuck yelped as a dog might when kicked. He was struggling to stay up even as his ribs snapped, splintered against Raleigh’s borrowed power. The demon twisted up inside his head in glee, wrapping his fingers tighter around the candle holder as he prepared to beat Chuck to death.

 _You can’t kill him like this. I’ve seen him._ And he flashed back to the time Chuck came back after tangling with a reaper. His entire stomach had been burned out and he lived, he breathed. He just needed a little blood. Raleigh would give him all the blood he had in his veins if he could turn the clock back. Make Chuck whole again.

The demon leaned in for a close up, rolling him over onto his back.

Chuck’s face was a mass of bruises, red and swollen in the dim light.

Tears tracked down his eyes, lost in the rain, drop of salt mixing with the blood.

Chuck winked.

“Like my father used to say,” he gurgled through gaps in his teeth. “Take the shot when you have it.”

A hand shot out and clamped around his ankle. He fell flat on his back even as he scrambled for a purchase, the demon swinging the iron wildly. Chuck’s arm broke right above the elbow. His wrist snapped. His jaw cracked but he didn’t dare loosen his grip. He never even screamed.

And he began to chant in a clear, loud voice “ _Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus_ ”

His face began to burn.

“ _Omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii_ ”

“This isn’t the end!” The demon screeched. “You’re just delaying the inevitable!”

“ _Omnis legio, omnis congregation_ ”

“And you know what the best part is?” It laughed when it became clear Chuck wouldn’t let go. “He would have said yes if you’d asked, the stupid little shit. IF ONLY YOU’D _ASKED_!”

Chuck’s eyes bulged.

“... _et secta diabolica_ ”

With a howl the demon left him and it struck him as he collapsed to his side, there was a lot more blood than there had been moments before. It wasn’t raining anymore, a soft drizzle coming off the shards of glass but it wasn’t raining. A wet choke had him turn his head. Yancy groped for a pulse before leaving him. Everyone fucking left him.

Miraculously, Chuck was still alive, blood thick around his nose. He blinked slowly when Yancy patted him down pleading “Chuck, don’t look, okay? Don’t.”

He looked down and said “oh”

The candle holder was sticking out from his chest, the three inch spike driven four inches deep.

Yancy’s face crumpled.

“Can you take it out?” Raleigh rasped, throat burned after the exorcism.

“Ahh d’n kno.” Chuck slurred. “Fiii” he wiggled his fingers. “Feel alive.”

“Because you’re not dead.” Yancy said fiercely.

Chuck’s face, smashed beyond recognition.

“You can understand me.”

“I’ve always understood you, you asshole.” Yancy sobbed. “Now stop talking.”

Chuck hummed in joy, fingers groping along to tangle with his.

“Thaa nice. ‘appy.”

“You son of a bitch.” Raleigh punched the ground with is other hand. “Why did you let me...?”

“Stupid” Chuck replied. “Stupid, stupid, stupiiiiid.”

“Shhh...” Yancy soothed. “Later, when you’re better.”

Chuck beamed, bright enough to blot out the sun.

“Later.”

 

“Holy shit” the tattooed man said waking up. “Where am I? What happened?”

 

The man with many tattoos was Dr. Newton Geiszler—“Call me Newt, only my mom calls me doctor.”—a pathologist and a faculty member at the University of Washington.

“It was the weirdest thing.” He chattered. “One moment, I was in my office going over reports—you would not believe the garbage they try to shovel in my inbox. The next, poof!”

Raleigh realized the importance of talking. The man was understandably freaked out. He himself had never seen a genuine possession in effect. After three showers, a bottle of body wash and his dick feeling like it would never get hard again, he still felt dirty. Like he could get sandpaper, drag it up and down his skin and he still wouldn’t be clean enough.

But if the man didn’t stop talking, Yancy might make him stop. Worse yet, he might make him stop. He discreetly wiped his eyes against the back of his wrist.

With a final snip, Geizler finished wrapping Chuck’s head.

“I’ve done all I can” he said, “I mean, I could do more if you let me take him to the hospital.”

“He’s a fairy.” Raleigh snapped bitterly. “How long before doctors realize he’s not human?”

“Dude,” Geizler looked offended. “I wouldn’t do that. I can be discreet.”

“Too much of a risk.” Yancy replied woodenly. “No hospitals.”

Geizler threw up his hands in exasperation.

Uncharacteristically somber, he snapped off his gloves and said “then he is going to die.”

Raleigh took a scalpel and slit open his wrist. The other man flailed and yelled as blood splashed on the tray next to the murder weapon, dripping steadily as he cupped the precious liquid and held it over Chuck’s mouth.

Chuck’s throat flexed as though trying to swallow but his jaws were broken, they didn’t close, his tongue came out but his fangs did not. He felt like an idiot. His teeth had been broken in. Raleigh broke Chuck’s teeth in. He couldn’t drink blood.

“Can we get an IV? Some sort of tube?”

Geizler shook his head.

“I told you, his skin is like diamond. The only thing I could do was to keep him in one piece.”

“He’s going to die then.” Raleigh said tonelessly. “Chuck’s going to die.”

 

Raleigh stormed out, broke several, a lot of replaceable looking things. He threw around the cold iron until his lungs burned from the injustice of it all. Why Chuck? Why now when things were getting better?

He choked on a sob and sank to his knees before the corpus. And he did something he had never done before. He prayed.

He prayed for Chuck, he prayed for Yancy, he prayed for himself in case Chuck did not pull through. Chuck was so damaged. And it was his fault. If only he’d fought the demon off. If he’d been stronger.

Raleigh punched the altar until his knuckles split, leaving red smudges at Jesus’ feet.

“I’d do it.” He told Yancy who stood behind him. “I’d do it because he’s a kid. Because he always looked at you and I was fucking jealous even though I’d never said it. Sometimes I wouldn’t translate the stuff he said properly because I felt special. He made me feel special.”

Yancy hugged him.

“I know Ray, I know.”

“I’m so _sorry_.”

“He’ll survive. He’s been through worse. He’s going to be okay.”

Raleigh only cried harder.

 

Chuck was not okay.

If he recovered, Raleigh failed to see the progress.

The hole in his heart, the one he put there, never closed up.

Geizler had cleared out by day three, after helping them move Chuck to a cheap rental unit and washing his hands of it. They took turns squeegeeing blood down Chuck’s throat before realizing that it was a choking hazard, the liquid congealing much faster than Chuck’s system could absorb it.

His wounds festered, jagged strips of flesh taking on a greenish tint. Every time they changed the bandages, Raleigh had to resist the urge to gag. The first maggot he found squirming in Chuck’s stomach, he realized that things would get much worse before it got better.

He was about to check on Chuck when he realized that Yancy was always there standing over him. There was something inexplicably wrong with the picture but he couldn’t put a finger on it. Instead, he stood stupid as his brother leaned over and brushed a kiss across the tip of Chuck’s chin. The only spot that hadn’t been damaged. That patch of skin below his bust lips.

“Hey” Raleigh said weakly as Yancy looked up. “How’s he doing?”

“Better I think.” Yancy answered. “I’m going to sit with him for a while.”

“Oh, okay.”

He turned to go in the second bedroom when he saw Yancy emerge blearily. He crumpled his face. “Were you... talking to someone?”

“Weren’t you...”

The door slammed on Chuck’s room.

“Shit!”

Heart leaping to his throat, he tried to kick in the door. When that didn’t work, he slammed his body against the thin piece of plywood, once, twice before the board gave way with a crunch. But still, he could not open the door.

“This way” Yancy ordered, dragging him towards the kitchen.

“What? Why?”

“Because we can go through here.” He kicked the wall down in a shower of debris. In the room, Yancy lookalike had disappeared, replaced by an older man with strong shoulders and intense blue eyes. Yancy already had his sawed-off, aimed straight at the stranger’s forehead. Still, the man did not move away.

“Get away from him.”

“And what?” The man barked, his voice rounded with weary amusement. “And ruin all my hard work.”

Yancy cocked the gun.

But Raleigh was faster.

Feathers filled the room, casting a silvery shadow in a place with no light. The man held Chuck’s slack wrist before kissing it on the inside. Right next to each other, the two could have passed for father and son, a heartbroken father and his ailing son, father and son. The gun dropped from his nerveless fingers.

“You’re Chuck’s father.”

The man nodded in reply.

“He’ll be better now. Kids, what can you do? Pain in the arse. But he’s a good ‘un. Too curious for his own good. The curse of his won’t bother him none.” He let go, fingers spasming around the empty air before returning to his side. “Take care of him.”

“Wait” Raleigh blurted out. “What about you?”

The man cocked his head.

“What about me?”

In a gentler voice he said, “Let him hope. Let him think his father died looking for him. What is dead, should stay dead.”

 

“Are you sure we’re not lost?”

“Fuck you Raleigh, I’m not the one who can’t use a GPS.”

“I told you, the voice thing creeps me out.”

Yancy rolled his eyes. “And here we are.”

Surprisingly, Chuck’s father’s grave was in America.

“I just wanted something to remember him by.”

The grey tombstone was worn, neglected since the last time Chuck had been—so around World War II. Chuck pulled at the plants, his finger nails sparking neon as he did so.

Since his recovery, Chuck had lost all his powers as vampires or fairy. The kid didn’t seem to mind but sometimes he would reach out for it and there was a glow of something that washed over them like warm air.

“Huh, who the hell names their kid Hercules?”

“I did you cunt.” Chuck scowled, flashing his teeth. The action was surprisingly adorable without the requisite fangs. “I don’t remember his name.” He said resentfully. “I had to put something on the rock and hell, why not something he’d get a kick out of.”

Yancy rubbed his shoulders soothingly.

“You did good kid.”

“’m not a kid.”

Chuck knelt down and placed a bouquet of white lilies on the grave.

“Hi dad.”

**Author's Note:**

> There might have been a sequel in the works. Basically, Chuck, Raleigh and Yancy get back in the game and save the world. May or may not contain smut. If they can work out a settlement deal regarding who gets which part of Chuck during marriage. Chuck may require prenup.


End file.
